Ancient World Review

Moche Culture Wiped Out By Extreme Weather?

Notes: This clip is from the BBC documentary "The Lost Civilization of Peru." The Moche Culture existed in northern Peru from around 100-800 AD and apparently collapsed during the period 500-750 AD, which coincides with the "Mega El Nino" and subsequent drought suggested by this ice-core evidence.

There is also some evidence that the Moche conducted ritual sacrifices during these storms:

"Evidence that violence was a significant part of Moche society was first identified in ceramic and mural art," according to About.com's Guide To The Moche Civilization. "Images of warriors in battle, decapitations and sacrifices were originally believed to have been ritual enactments, at least in part, but recent archaeological investigations have revealed that some of the scenes were realistic portrayals of events in Moche society. In particular, bodies of victims have been found at Huaca de la Luna, some of which were dismembered or decapitated and some were clearly sacrificed during episodes of torrential rains. Genetic data supports the identification of these individuals as enemy combatants." [Emphasis Added]

Ancient Sican Tomb Discovered In Peru

"The Sican (also Sicán) culture is the name that archaeologist Izumi Shimada gave to the culture that inhabited what is now the north coast of Peru between about AD 750 and 1375. According to Shimada, Sican means "temple of the moon." Source: Wikipedia. See The Sican Archaeological Project for more information. Note: discovery was apparently made last year.

Amazon Deforestation Reveals New Culture

"The combination of land cleared of its rainforest for grazing and satellite survey have revealed a sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society in the upper Amazon Basin on the east side of the Andes," according to the British archeological journal Antiquity. "This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads." (See photograph) "...the 'geoglyph culture' stretches over a region more than 250 km across..." and archeologists have apparently seen less than a tenth of it.

This is a fantastic discovery for several different reasons. First and most obvious: this is apparently a new culture and there's no telling how big it actually was or how this find will change the history of the region. Secondly, this is yet another example of how limited our knowledge of the past really is. Who knows how many more civilizations have yet to be discovered around the world? New sites are being found all the time. It's also interesting because it shows that deforestation is nothing new and occurs in waves as civilizations rise and fall over the millenia.

Lost City Of The Cloud People Discovered In Peru

 A lost city belonging to the Chachapoyas, a mysterious race of blond, white-skinned people, has been discovered in the Amazon rain forest of Peru, according to the Daily Mail Online. Also known as the Warriors of the Clouds or just The Cloud People, the Chachapoyas "commanded a vast kingdom stretching across the Andes to the fringes of Peru's northern Amazon jungle, before it was conquered by the Incas."

The Cloud People sided with the Spanish against the Incas and were wiped out by disease and war in the 16th Century. "Chachapoyas chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon wrote of the tribe: 'They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.' Apparently to be sacrificed.

This is an important discovery in the hidden history of South America because there is "no known European ancestry in the region" and because it shows how many ruins could still be hidden in the jungle. The Chachapoyas were a major power at one time. They built "the Kuellap fortress on the top of a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Incas' Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later."

Possible Pre-Ceramic Period Human Sacrifices Found In Peru

"Three possible human sacrifice victims have been found at a 4,000-year-old archeological site in Peru," according to the National Geographic News. The "apparently mutilated, partial skeletons"--two pairs of female legs and "the decapitated body of a young male in his twenties," (photos) were found at a site about 90 miles from Lima, Peru, and apparently date to the Pre-Ceramic Period (3000 BC to 1800 BC). The timelines I've seen for this period are all over the place and cover a lot of different cultures, but the find is considered important because "many researchers have characterized the Pre-Ceramic period as very peaceful, with no evidence of the kind of violence that was seen during the [later] Moche [A.D. 100 to 800] time of human sacrifices and mutilations," according to Alejandro Chu Barrera, the archeologist who led the dig. This is all pre-Inca. If these remains were actually sacrificial victims, it would suggest that human sacrifice was common throughout the region for hundreds of years before the Inca.

Ancient "Pre-Hispanic" Pyramid Complex Discovered In Peru

"The remnants of at least ten pyramids have been discovered on the coast of Peru, marking what could be a vast ceremonial site of an ancient, little-known culture, archaeologists say." National Geographic source here. The pyramids may have been a "religious center of a cemetery for nobility" belonging to the Vicus civilization, a "pre-Hispanic civilization that flourished in Peru's northern coastal desert from 200 B.C to 300 A.D. and is known for its decorated ceramics." The Logan Museum of Anthropology has some examples of Vicus ceramics here. A great ring of blogs devoted to the ancient Americas can be entered here.